After two years of waiting to adopt-slogging through paperwork and bouncing between hope and despair-a miracle finally happened for Vanessa McGrady. Her sweet baby, Grace, was a dream come true. Then Vanessa made a highly uncommon gesture: when Grace's biological parents became homeless, Vanessa invited them to stay.
Without a blueprint for navigating the practical basics of an open adoption or any discussion of expectations or boundaries, the unusual living arrangement became a bottomless well of conflicting emotions and increasingly difficult decisions complicated by missed opportunities, regret, social chaos, and broken hearts.
Written with wit, candor, and compassion, Rock Needs River is, ultimately, Vanessa's love letter to her daughter, one that illuminates the universal need for connection and the heroine's journey to find her tribe.
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I'd walked home from dinner with a girlfriend, Joanna. SOMETHING YOU REGRET YOU CAN'T UNSLAM A DOOR
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(Little A, 1 February 2019, 185 pages, e-book, bought from @AmazonKindle)
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I really enjoyed this memoir, if anything it was too short and am puzzled by the scathing reviews I've read on Goodreads. Oh, well, another man's meat is another man's poison and all that jazz. The first few chapters focus on the author's past, failed relationships, busted hopes, her marriage and desire and failure to have children. I'd never heard of open adoptions and I can see good and bad elements to doing it. I can see wanting to be open and honest with your child about where they come from but I can also see being afraid the birth parents would try to take over or have a more prominent role in the child's life. The best part of this memoir is after the author's marriage ends and she files for a divorce from her alcoholic husband. This is when the story really starts to come together. She's suddenly a single parent and her ex-husband has visitation rights. Her gesture to let her daughter's homeless birth parents live with her shows more kindles than I could muster, especially when it becomes clear they're pretty much wastrels; make little attempts to get jobs, take the generous gifts the author manages to get by reaching out via social media but don't even write the thank you note's she asks them to and spend their time 'making music'. I shudder to think about Grace's life with them if she hadn't been adopted. She has more patience and a better heart than I would have. I found this a very moving, painful at times and brutally honest book.
